Monday, March 04, 2013

Emperor: Gen. Fellers Investigates

Gen.
Bonner Fellers was a principled anti-Communist with a deep affinity for
Japanese culture. He sounds like our
kind of guy. Known as Gen. MacArthur’s protégé,
he was no favorite of Eisenhower’s. Yet,
it was the former who assigned him a nearly impossible task. In just ten days, Fellers must determine
Emperor Hirohito’s culpability in Japanese war crimes and recommend whether he
should be executed or retain his position as formal head of state. Just what did the Emperor know and when did
he know it are the driving questions of Peter Webber’s Emperor (trailer
here), which
opens this Friday in New York.

As
a college student, Fellers really did visit Japan several times. In Webber’s film, he is pursuing Aya Shimada,
a shy but admirably progressive Japanese woman, who was forced to withdraw from
Fellers’ small Midwestern college when tensions between their countries escalate. While in Japan, he writes his thesis on the
psychology of the Japanese military, particularly with regards their loyalty to
the emperor, so he is relatively prepared for his military investigation. However, while he chases down former
government and military officials for MacArthur’s inquiry, Fellers also
searches just as doggedly for traces of Shimada.

Of
course, Shimada’s storyline is a fictional construct. We can only imagine what Gen. MacArthur would
have thought of a senior staff officer dividing his efforts between a time-sensitive
assignment and his personal business. On
the other hand, it gave Webber an excuse to cast Eriko Hatsune in a prominent
role. Although not especially famous in
Japan (an assumption confirmed by a Japanese colleague at the press screening),
Hatsune generated international notice for her brief but devastating supporting
turn Tran Anh Hung’s Norwegian Wood, which
she has now parlayed into a co-starring role in a major English language
production. Would you jeopardize
re-igniting the bloodiest war in human history to find her again? Sure, probably.

Indeed,
Hatsune is exquisitely sensitive and rather soulful as Shimada, developing some
surprisingly appealing romantic chemistry with Matthew Fox’s Fellers. While Fox hardly ages a gray whisker in his
transformation from Earlham undergrad to one-star general, he projects an
intelligent presence and a reasonably credible military bearing. At least he does not look out of place in the
uniform.

While
Tommy Lee Jones (who as you might have heard, did not win an Oscar for Lincoln) sounds perfect for MacArthur,
he might just be too perfect. It is all
very cool early on when he tells his men “let’s show them some old fashioned
American swagger.” However, we have seen
this sort of act from Jones before. Frankly,
the strutting about, telling down-home one-liners with his corncob pipe
clenched in his teeth gets pretty shticky over time.

If
Emperor does any business to speak of,
you should anticipate the Fellers blowback to start with a vengeance. He was definitely a right-winger, but his
vision of a free and democratic Japan counterbalancing the Soviets’ influence
in Asia has essentially been vindicated by history. Likewise, his judgment on Hirohito (which
historically literate viewers should expect whether or not they are familiar
with Fellers) has proved entirely justified.
Expect much to be made of his time as the U.S. military attaché in Egypt
before the war, during which the code for his sensitive reports back to Washington
had been cracked by the German. Although
everyone concedes Fellers was blameless in the affair, there is no denying the
awkwardness of it. There is also the ultra-PC
complaint, decrying Fellers as yet another white savior figure. Of course, this ignores the reality of Japan’s
unconditional surrender and the pressures from Washington to swing Hirohito
from a rope.

Emperor
presents the challenges of peace in a rather
thoughtful manner. Frustratingly, for
reasons of presumed convenience, screenwriters Vera Blasi and David Klass let claims
of moral equivalency go unchallenged.
Yes, America was in the Philippines long before the war, but what
happened in Nanjing is entirely different matter altogether. Watching Emperor
one would conclude nothing of the sort had happened under the watch of
Hirhito and Tōjō, which does an enormous disservice to history, ultimately
cheapening the film. Decidedly mixed, Emperor earns moderate credit for
telling unacknowledged story of Fellers and nicely showcasing a future
international star like Hatsune. It
opens this Friday (3/8) in New York at the AMC Village 7 and the Brooklyn
Heights Cinema.

About Me

J.B. (Joe Bendel) works in the book publishing industry, and also teaches jazz survey courses at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He has written jazz articles for publications which would be appalled by his political affiliation. He also coordinated instrument donations for displaced musicians on a volunteer basis for the Jazz Foundation of America during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Send e-mail to: jb.feedback "at" yahoo "dot" com.